Myself, I have a philosophy degree and a fake computer-science degree. I say fake because I really didn't learn anything.
I try and wake up relatively early. I listen to some music and check Twitter. I also make sure I weigh myself and check how long I slept. I do that because knowing that data seems better than not knowing it.
Don't eat the pizza; get lots of sleep - you have to take care of yourself. It's about being your tip top self at all times, and if you are unhealthy, or you're sick, or you don't feel good, even it's just because you're sluggish, you're not going to make it because you're not going to be able to react to things.
The digital team who were running Twitter, they weren't just going to put out a tweet for fun. They're going to try and figure out how do we measure the impact. Then they'd tweet it, and if it worked, great.
I spent a lot of time hacking, doing all this stuff, building websites, building communities, working all the time, and then a lot of time drinking, partying, and hanging out. And I had to choose when to do which.
The thing about Snapchat is it is ephemeral, so you don't - it's not like a video that you post to YouTube and then everyone can see it. It's this video that you get to share this kind of very intimate experience again, this very kind of genuine experience with another person in a more one-on-one sort of way. And I really appreciate that.
We didn't want to waste time by sending our volunteers to Republicans; we sent them to the undecided.
When you read Trump's tweets or see candidates interact online like Jeb did with Hillary, you're like, 'Yes, it's just like my friends.' That's the magic.
We were orbiting around the idea of intent and context. We would take the bus into work, and if you said, 'Here's a shirt you might like,' and I open it on my mobile phone, I'm not going to pull out my credit card and wallet. We thought, 'How does someone do this? An e-mail to yourself, or you try to remember?'
I wonder which is ultimately more creepy: shopping at Amazon or using Facebook?
One of the things that I used to make sure I'd do was to always make sure I'd have dinner at home because I needed that disconnect from work. Even when it was crazy, I'd go home at, like, 10 o'clock and have dinner. That way, I had time where I could decompress a little bit and then go back in.
When you have a good vision and a very large capability of impact, that's very powerful.
A lot of people are buying things on the Internet - not just white men.
My career choice has largely been what I wanted to do. I always knew that technology would be one of the threads.
I grew up in Greeley, Colorado, in a house without a television set. I was a very nerdy kid: I used to play 'astronaut' and eat bouillon as astronaut food. We also had tons of books.
When you go from building T-shirts to software for a presidential campaign used by a cast of millions, it's pretty easy to think, 'OK, we can build something pretty big.'
The advice I used to give to engineers I hired was, 'Don't eat the pizza.' Sometimes when you walk into these high-pressure environments, it's, like, doughnuts everywhere and all these little cakes.
In the U.S., it's all about turnout, which means you have to appeal to every single Democrat to get them to vote.
When I look for new books, I often struggle to find things that challenge and entertain me. This has caused me to spend a number of cycles thinking about where I can get the serendipitous book discovery experience that we had in physical book stores.
It was on a bulletin board that I first learned about hacker culture, the 'Let's just break through this wall and see what's on the other side' mentality.
People are building apps that are doing super-crazy things, and there's a lot of talk about modeling and microtargeting. Facebook can predict when people are going to break up, and Target is able to predict if a woman is pregnant before she knows just based on the type of lotion she bought.
Presidential campaign and White House are two aggressively separate things. They still think I'm the weird kid in the corner, so I don't have much power. But I'll definitely do something to help.
I would still describe myself as a hacker. I still remember feeling the magic, the sense of discovery, when I first connected to a bulletin board. It seemed like the world was somehow brighter, the greens were greener. Like I'd stepped through a portal to the other side. I knew back then that things would never be the same again for me.
Taking time to do something slower than you normally would is a privilege that should not be ignored.
Data is what powers all of us and our lives. It is ubiquitous among our now-connected lives. I love how it is now the oxygen of our Internet world.
I programmed computers every day. And one of my favourite apps we built was this thing called Awesome Updater, that all it did is send you a tweet randomly that was like, 'Yo, you're awesome.'
When I called people and said, 'Hey! Do you want to work for the president?' they usually said yes. I had 2 people say no. One person said no because they were a Republican; one person said no because they're a Libertarian.
I am patiently waiting for the singularity.
First of all, a giant corporation probably shouldn't be being hacked by teenagers. I put that on the corporation, not the teenagers. Teenagers are going to do what teenagers are going to do - rebelling. But if they're able to hack a big corporation, that seems like the corporation should be better at security.
Instagram is amazing, and I enjoy sharing photos there. However, I don't think it is where my photos will go to live.
You can tell charlatans when they say 'big' in front of everything.
This idea of, there's a locked door; how do you open it? You don't necessarily care what's behind it; you're just more excited about opening the lock... It's not about finding the treasure; it's more about defeating the puzzle.
There are a lot of people who are unable to take a break to clear their minds. I imagine they are the ones who need it the most.
'Data scientist,' as a profession, is largely a fad.
I really think we have a future ahead of us where chat is obviously a big part of it, but I don't think the context of having that little assistant in your pocket is necessarily the only place where it will be.
When you walk into a field office, you have many opportunities. We'll hand you a call sheet. You can make calls. You can knock on doors, and they'll have these stacks there for you. They'll say: 'Harper, you've knocked on 50 doors. That's great. Here's how you compare to the rest of them.' But it's all very offline.
The team that I had built was all white dudes with the same perspective on things that was at times comfortable and easy, but we weren't as innovative as our competitors.
If there's one thing about Chicago, we take care of our own.
Before I was hired by Obama's team as the CTO for his 2012 re-election campaign, I had certainly never been involved with anything of that nature before. Yet, I somehow knew I could do the job. I attribute that confidence to my experience as a hacker and the subsequent willingness to take risks.
Advice is always awesome because it never makes any sense when you compare it all together. It always contradicts other advice. I love advice.
I never would wish technology failing on any sort of opponent or enemy.
My parents are very supportive: they helped redirect my technology attitude and my punkness into positive things.
Books have literally powered most of my life. Whether as a stress relief when doing hard things or as vacation fodder, they are a constant and important part of my life.
Photo management software is terrible. Mylio is pretty good - but disrupts the 'natural' flow of things: i.e. Apple Photos.
We make interesting companies and real businesses. It's not social networks for cats.
Oftentimes in tech, people think, 'I'm the only one that has this.' I call them the Atlas People. They're like, 'The weight of the world is on the shoulders. I'm the only person who can solve this problem.' But you can't do that.
We see these wonderful apps that really have changed our world in many good ways such as Uber or Airbnb, but at the same time, they're drastically changing the workforce. And they're changing them so much that the industries themselves are not able to keep up.
I'm a white male in power. In many cases, I'm the enemy.
If you want to go and build a company that exists in Silicon Valley, then you should go and do it there. But if you want to build a company that is Australian, that represents your culture and your being, then you should do it in Sydney.
